1. Field of the Technology
The technology presented herein relates to a game system, a game apparatus, and a storage medium storing the game program. More specifically, the present technology relates to a game system, a game apparatus, and a storage medium storing the game program for playing a communication game by two game apparatuses or more having communication functions.
2. Description of the Related Art
An example of the game system in the related art of this sort of technology is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2004-141225 [A63F 13/12, H04Q7/38] (document 1) laid-open on May 20, 2004. According to the document 1, when a child machine detects that communication with a parent machine is disconnected, the child machine tries to receive a parent-machine packet broadcast from the parent machine. The child machine receives the parent-machine packet before time out, and the child machine is successful in returning to the communication game when a child-machine number of the child machine itself exists in the parent-machine packet.
In a case where a match-up game is played through wireless communication by three game apparatuses (referred to as X, Y, and Z for the sake of convenience for description) in a general communication game, when a player leaves the game apparatus Z for over a predetermined time to allow the game apparatus Z to be switched to a sleep mode, the communication is automatically disconnected to interrupt the match-up game. Then, even if the game apparatus Z is connected again, it is necessary to start over the match-up game from the beginning, the player of the game apparatus Z causes trouble to players of the game apparatus X and game apparatus Y.
In the related art disclosed in the document 1, in a case where the communication game is played by three game apparatuses (referred to as A, B, and C for the sake of convenience for description), even if the communication with the game apparatus C is disconnected, the communication game proceeds only with the remaining game apparatus A and game apparatus B. Therefore, when the game apparatus C is connected again (returns to the communication game), because the player of the game apparatus C participates in the communication game in the middle of the game having proceeded to some extent, the player of the game apparatus C has large disadvantage.